You've heard it plenty of times: The Saudis are exporting Islamist militancy throughout the Middle East and beyond, and Americans are picking up the tab, with the $30 billion we spend annually on Saudi oil helping to finance fundamentalist mosques and madrassas. "We are financing both sides in the war on terrorism," observed Thomas L. Friedman in a March New York Times column. And we're doing so faster than ever, because oil now fetches nearly $60 a barrel--more than twice the pre-September 11 price. The only solution, experts say, is to spend less on fossil fuel and more on renewable energy--a double whammy of environmentalism and power politics that Friedman has dubbed the "geo-green strategy." Cutting dependence on foreign oil is "America's best weapon against terrorism," argues the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (a hawkish think tank whose energy proposals have been backed by green groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council). The group says it would "invalidate the social contract between the leaders and their people and stem the flow of resources to the religious establishment."

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